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Re: Theoretical build good for overclocking? [Xeon X5460]

The PSU is the Enermax Revolution X't. From what I've seen it comes highly rated although it may not be as good as other Gold-certified power supplies and its efficiency drops at higher loads. It also doesn't seem to be able to handle temperatures above 44°C, and has some other minor drawbacks. The case I bought has plenty of cooling room and I can always buy some more fans, so hopefully it won't become an issue, but it's probably not an ideal overclocking PSU. I may have to upgrade before I can make the most out of my system.

My plan right now is to find a discounted or very slightly used 80GB SSD for $30 or a 120GB SSD for $40. I will be keeping my eye out for sales but $40 is basically my limit on an SSD. I will definitely look out for asynchronous Nand. However unless I can get another SSD for free I have no plans right now to try a Raid 0 configuration.

If prices come down again by the time I have the money to buy it, I may consider the X5470 instead as it has a higher core clock speed AND higher multiplier, meaning it would be easier to reach higher overclock speeds at, I assume, lower temperatures. It's also, you know, twice as expensive as the X5460 on ebay. I still have to buy accessories like a mechanical keyboard and decent headset, so we'll see where my budget is at.

Re: Theoretical build good for overclocking? [Xeon X5460]

Unless you're doing intensive image manipulation, or video encoding, it's doubtful that a raid 0 setup for your o/s ssd would be worthwhile with a sata2 system. The difference in gaming performance with an ssd is usually limited to somewhat faster load times. Brand new 128GB ssd's cost about $50 - $60. You will get better performance and longer ssd life if your ssd has 15% - 20% of its capacity reserved for OP (over provisioning).

I started off with an OCZ Agility2 60GB ssd (with asynchronous) Nand and performance diminished when it was about 65% full. My second Agility2 ssd was lightly used in my backup system and it failed suddenly.

The main thing that will hold you back is using a decent mid-range cpu cooler instead of a high end cpu cooler.
The Scythe Mugen air coolers are quite good and the newer models sell for $50 or less, but .... they are HUGE and may not fit easily in your system. A new $80 - $100+ AIO (all in one) water cooling kit will provide better cooling performance and help with improved airflow in the computer case. With an AIO cooler it's best to provide additional direct cooling airflow to the VRM components on both sides of the cpu socket.

In the MOD 771 thread Luke started out with an X5460 with the lower end P53-DS3L motherboard and to hit 4.0GHz he upgraded to an X5470 with an EP45-UD3P motherboard and 8GB of Kingston HyperX 1066MHz memory.

Overclocking is a lot like racing; how fast are you willing to spend.
You will probably be able to overclock to about 3.50GHz or slightly higher with the X5460 cpu.
As I recall, the Xeon processors have a TDP = 120 watts where my Q9550 and Q9650 have a TDP = 95 watts.

TDP = Thermal Design Power

The TDP is typically not the largest amount of heat the CPU could ever generate (peak power), such as by running a power virus, but rather the maximum amount of heat that it would generate when running "real applications."
Thermal design power - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_design_power
Wikipedia

Re: Theoretical build good for overclocking? [Xeon X5460]

I'm not really prepared to spend $100 on a cooler for a nearly 8-year old processor, and even $50 is probably out of my budget right now. 3.5GHz would be an acceptable overclock for my setup, considering I'll probably be overclocking my RAM and GPU a little bit as well. Apparently Nvidia even has an app that makes overclocking their cards easy. Anything that can be overclocked, I want to overclock it, even if it reduces the long-term life span of my components somewhat. This machine doesn't need to last forever.

When Black Friday rolls around, if I don't have the money to outright buy a new PC, I will start gathering components like an AIO water cooler that I could still use in my new system once I can build it. Until then I will make the most of whatever is available.

I didn't know about over-provisioning. If that's the case then I'll definitely be looking out for sales on 128GB drives, although I'd still settle for 80GB if I had to. I intended to buy them new but I have seen some pretty good deals on barely-used ones on reddit. I plan one using my 160GB HDD as a backup drive for it anyway, so that even if it fails I don't lose any data.

In looking around at drives I did notice that some SSDs have a 32MB cache. What's it for? My understanding was that HDDs used cache for frequently-accessed data because it's faster that retrieving it from the platter. What difference would it realistically make for an SSD other than extending its lifespan just a little bit since the processor doesn't have to access the drive itself?

Re: Theoretical build good for overclocking? [Xeon X5460]

Your o/s ssd does a lot of reads and even more writes, mostly with files that are smaller than 4KB. Even with the much faster ssd reads and writes, these operations are much slower than the large sequential file reads and writes. The ssd cache serves the same function with ssd's as it does with hard drives, that is, it will cache small files that will be written to the ssd and then do fewer but larger ssd writes. It can also cache small files that are frequently accessed for reading.

With your limited budget you should avoid buying higher priced, brand new hardware for now. Later if you want to overclock more, you can upgrade equipment and probably sell your older hardware for close to what you paid for it.

Keep in mind how much space your games will need. If you have a lot of games that require a lot of space, you might need a larger ssd or you could install some of the games on your hard drive.

The Cooler Master Hyper cpu coolers are very popular where some models offer better cooling.
Buy the best one that fits your budget and uses a 120mm cooling fan. If you can find a used one with a good cooling fan, go for it.

The screen-shot below is for my 3TB hard drive.
Look at the 4K and 4k QD4 read and write MB/s results and you'll see that the same ssd scores are much higher for the single BX100 (non raid 0) ssd, by a factor of 40x -170x.

Re: Theoretical build good for overclocking? [Xeon X5460]

So it's taking me a little longer to put this build together than I thought it would. However, I am slowly making progress. I picked up a used 128GB OCZ Vertex SSD for thirty bucks, but it's currently in my laptop, which I also upgraded with another gig of RAM. I am hoping to sell the leftover SODIMMs I bought in the bundle to recover some of the cost.

However I did run into a bit of a snag in that the person I bought some RAM from online only sent me half of what I ordered. I did get a refund for what was missing but I decided that since my rig will be for gaming it might be worth tracking down some CL4 800MHz DDR2. I have a couple of 2 x 2GB sets that I'm looking at buying but they are different voltages, 1.95V vs 2.0V. Is it going to make much of a difference? Can I balance the voltages in BIOS without much problem, or is it going to be an issue later with overclocking? They're otherwise basically the same. One is Crucial Ballistix and the other is HyperX. If I could get them for less than $50 shipped I was going to go for it. Then I could sell off the 4GB of CL6 RAM I got from the other guy.

I'm also thinking that 128GB is not a lot of storage for gaming and recording/editing footage. I could probably make it work for a while but I'm hoping that around Black Friday I can pick up a 512GB SSD for pretty cheap, ideally a Samsung 850 EVO. I know its power would outstrip my computer's ability to use it, but that's fine.

I will probably not have much money to spend on this build until toward the end of October or the middle of November, since I need to get some work done on my car before it gets too cold. I'm going to try to get as many hours in at work as I can to try to finish this build before the end of the year. If possible I was also going to splurge on a 4GB GTX 960 instead of the 650ti Boost I originally planned on, because I really want to play Arkham Knight, Witcher 3, and MGS 5 at decent settings.

Re: Theoretical build good for overclocking? [Xeon X5460]

Buying and installing two different memory kits can often cause booting and/or stability problems.

Memory and motherboard manufacturers create their memory compatibility lists by testing individual memory kits in each motherboard model. Installing two different compatible memory kits might work OK, but this is an iffy approach, especially if you will be overclocking your system. In a few cases, there have been memory problems when you buy and install an "identical" second memory kit from the same manufacturer if the second kit was manufactured later using different memory chips. The annoying part is that the second kit usually had the exact same model number as the original kit.

Re: Theoretical build good for overclocking? [Xeon X5460]

That's what I was afraid of. I think it's going to be difficult to find a full 8GB set of identical memory. Most people only seem to have 4GB. I might keep an eye on ebay for a bit but I may just settle on some CL5 RAM I was offered.

Re: Theoretical build good for overclocking? [Xeon X5460]

Alright, so I finally procured some RAM and stayed up into the small hours of the morning to put together a functional PC. Even though it isn't my gaming build, it will work as a test rig while I learn overclocking. I won't have time to mess with it until later in the week, when I will possibly make a dedicated thread for it, but I had a quick question about the order of operations.

What's the best order to overclock components in? I've read that overclocking RAM can help you achieve higher CPU clock speeds, but most people seem to recommend overclocking RAM last. GPU seems to be the most standalone component and the least affected by the other two in terms of performance gains. It also seems to be the easiest to overclock since the software tools for it are pretty good now. What do you guys typically recommend?

Re: Theoretical build good for overclocking? [Xeon X5460]

Alright, so I finally procured some RAM and stayed up into the small hours of the morning to put together a functional PC.

So why you forum system spec is not filled?

Originally Posted by LivingNexus

I've read that overclocking RAM can help you achieve higher CPU clock speeds

Where have you read that?

Originally Posted by LivingNexus

but most people seem to recommend overclocking RAM last.

CPU overclock is the most beneficial and worth dealing with, memory for last as it is for the show mostly.
Depend on which memory you have you may be forced to overclock it anyway, e.g. DDR2-800 memory would be overclocked with FSB > 400.